You are here

Kathleen Sebelius: Scapegoat

Cal Thomas is America’s most widely syndicated op-ed columnist, with 540 newspapers in the United States and abroad carrying his column, now syndicated by Tribune Media Services in Chicago. For 16 years his column was distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.He is the author of 10 books, including Blinded by Might: Why the Religious Right Can’t Save America (HarperCollins/Zondervan) and The Wit and Wisdom of Cal Thomas.

Dictionary.com offers two definitions for scapegoat: “1. A person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place; 2. Chiefly biblical. A goat let loose in the wilderness on Yom Kippur after the high priest symbolically laid the sins of the people on its head. Lev. 16:8,10,26.”

Both definitions seem to fit last week’s announcement of the “resignation” of Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, who presided over the disastrous rollout of the government’s website, healthcare.gov, which was supposed to provide easy access for people who wished to sign up for Obamacare.

It wasn’t entirely Sebelius’ fault, though her experience with a website when she was governor of Kansas should have sounded alarm bells. As The Daily Caller website reported last October, “Sebelius oversaw numerous costly and disastrous government website projects during her six-year governorship … including a failed update of the Department of Labor’s program to provide unemployment pay and other services and similar updates pertaining to the Department of Administration and the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles services.”

Kansas Labor Secretary Karin Brownlee told the Daily Caller about this: “In the Kansas Senate, I chaired the Commerce committee. We had oversight over the Department of Labor. For years, we watched as the Department of Labor under Sebelius worked on that computer program. After seven years and $50 million, something should work.”

When you’re spending taxpayer money, apparently successful outcomes is not a requirement.

Sebelius was tasked with putting the square peg of government into the round hole of free enterprise and competition. It didn’t work in Washington any better than it did in Kansas. The problem wasn’t just the Obamacare website. The problem was, and remains, Obamacare itself.

Those who have been paying attention know that the administration’s claim to have signed up more than 7 million people during the open enrollment period is bogus when one-fifth of those who are counted as “enrolled” have not paid their premiums. Costs have escalated, possibly discouraging new customers. Only 14 percent of those who have enrolled in Obamacare were previously uninsured, according to a McKinsey management consulting firm report cited by Forbes magazine.

In addition, McKinsey found that, according to Forbes, “only 48 percent had thus far signed on for a 2014 health plan. Within that 48 percent, three-fifths were previously insured people who liked their old plans and were able to keep them. The remaining two-fifths were the ones who signed up for coverage on the Obamacare exchanges. Of the Obamacare sign-ups, only 27 percent had been previously uninsured in 2013. And of that 27 percent, nearly half had yet to pay a premium. (By contrast, among the 73 percent who had been previously insured, 86 percent had paid.)”

In an April 9 article for Psychology Today, John C. Goodman, Ph.D., and author of “Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis,” writes the reason that Obamacare is failing to deliver on the president’s promises is that “…the administration had to appease every single Democratic constituency and every major special-interest group. Imagine going around a table and asking each group what is the one thing they must have in order to support the legislation — the insurance companies, the drug companies, the hospitals, the labor unions, AMA, AARP, etc., and no one making sure that all the separate demands fit together in a sensible way.”

The question remains: Why do so many people put their faith in government, when it does so few things well and with efficiency and reasonable cost? We don’t even seem to be able to win wars anymore, so why would anyone have faith that the government can do a better job of directing health insurance and inevitably dictating who gets health care and who does not than the private sector, or at best a private-public partnership?

President Obama’s nominee to replace Sebelius, budget director Sylvia Burwell, might turn out to be better at fixing websites, but she doesn’t have the power to fix Obamacare. No one does because it is based on a weak foundation and the notion that government can do anything. Obamacare is the wizard behind the curtain, but without the glimmer of Oz to back it up.

Cal Thomas’ latest book is “What Works: Common Sense Solutions for a Stronger America” is available in bookstores now. Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribune.com.

Rules for posting comments

Comments posted below are from readers. In no way do they represent the view of Stephens Media LLC or this newspaper. This is a public forum.

Comments may be monitored for inappropriate content but the newspaper is under no obligation to do so. Comment posters are solely responsible under the Communications Decency Act for comments posted on this Web site. Stephens Media LLC is not liable for messages from third parties.

IP and email addresses of persons who post are not treated as confidential records and will be disclosed in response to valid legal process.

Do not post:

Potentially libelous statements or damaging innuendo.

Obscene, explicit, or racist language.

Copyrighted materials of any sort without the express permission of the copyright holder.

Personal attacks, insults or threats.

The use of another person's real name to disguise your identity.

Comments unrelated to the story.

If you believe that a commenter has not followed these guidelines, please click the FLAG icon below the comment.